Thursday, August 9, 2012

Ideal Dinner Party

Once upon a time, before we had kids, as soon as we would enter the freeway I would start throwing hypothetical questions at BJ. "Where would you be right now if we weren't together?" "If you couldn't work in aerospace what would you do?" and so on. Until I asked, "If you had all the money in the world, what would you get me for Christmas?" and he replied, "A book of hypothetical answers."

The game stopped being fun after that.

For some reason tonight I'm thinking about dinner parties. If you could host a dinner party and invite four living non-fictional guests, who would they be? In other words, you can't invite Jesus or Luke Skywalker... These have to be actual people you'd want to have an actual conversation with. Bonus points if putting these people in a room together would result in a mind-blowing conversation.

I'll start. My four living non-fictional dinner guests are:

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Jon Stewart
Henry Rollins
Ze Frank

I'm kind of sad that I can't think of any women. Oh well. So, friends, who would you invite to dinner? And what would you fix?

First, Nobel Laureate and Italian Senator (for life) Rita Levi-Montalcini. At 103, she is still in great shape, and sharp as a tack. Her career has been amazing -- she started out in the 1930s, working in her bedroom / basement (studying chicken embryos) because as a Jew she was not allowed in major universities. Came to the US and discovered growth factors!

Second, Yoko Ono. Interesting artist who has met countless other fascinating people. She has also dealt with a wide range of challenges very publicly and with grace.

Third, Tina Fey. HILARIOUS! Also, I know she would prob. eat the food. Or am I confusing her with Liz Lemon?

Fourth - maybe Hilary Clinton? I would worry about her being stodgy, but I think she has loosened up in recent years, and she is SMART!!!

Honorable mentions would go to Ellen DeGeneres and her partner, Portia de Rossi. Cooking the meal and helping me host -- probably Ina Garten (just looked up how to spell her name and found out she was a White House nuclear policy analyst! Who knew!)